genuinely i do think it's crazy how this show hit every single mark for no reason other than pure love of the game. like this wasn't a money grab and it didn't think it would be a big success, jacob just read a book he enjoyed and thought huh i think that would be a cool thing to make into a tv show. and then he brought on hudson and connor and they're fresh and passionate and not bogged down by the industry yet and they instantly became best friends and wanted to just have fun bringing these characters to life. and they didn't have a huge budget but they did the most with what they had and everybody took the show seriously and everybody took the book seriously. the cinematographer worked his magic. the music supervisor managed to snag a well-known queer hit and an up and coming new release and old school gems that have been around since the 2000s. it's canadian to the core, built from the ground up. it takes russians and the russian language seriously. it uses sex in such a specific, meaningful way that almost no other show has done thus far, and especially not in a queer context like this. they interlaced every episode with callbacks and parallelism and self-references. they didn't take themselves too seriously. they took everything so seriously. there is love and care baked into the core of this show and it's deeply queer and it doesn't shy away from the horrors of toxic masculinity and hockey culture but it is also, always, a story of joy and love and happiness. and on top of everything, it's almost word for word, the original source material from the book.
like damn it's no wonder this thing has made us all insufferable and become a huge fucking success! so few productions in hollywood are doing it like this!!!
On Connor Storrie’s excellent Russian in HR (from a linguist)
Ok it’s time to put my Russian and linguistics (and Slavic linguistics) degrees to work and tell you why Connor Storrie’s Russian and accent work in this show is so freaking good. (Links added for those who want more info about stuff.) Hey other linguists — I’m playing fast and loose with notation here, ok, we’re not doing phonemes and IPA.
We’re going to go over overall mouth shape, palatalization, lack of aspiration, vowel reduction, and intonation with examples from Ilya’s dialogue! I’m going to talk about this from the perspective of an English speaker learning Russian since that’s what Connor (and I) did. Here we go.
1. Overall mouth shape
Every language has what you could think of as its own neutral or resting mouth position (aka, basis of articulation). One way to think of this is what the “I’m thinking” noise is — in English it’s uhh, in Spanish it’s often ehh. In Russian it’s mmm or ehhh or ahhh. The other thing is that the mouth typically does not open as much vertically when speaking Russian as when speaking English, but rather wider (horizontally).
Connor is doing a good job of maintaining a more Russian resting position (and I have a theory that this is one of the reasons his face looks so different as Ilya).
You can see Connor doing this when he says “ehh no” to Shane about whether this is his first time with a man in episode 1.
Also when he’s yelling at Alexei during the funeral in episode 5, we get to see him head on speaking Russian for an extended time, and you can see he is opening his mouth wider but not taller.
2. Palatalization
Every consonant has a place of articulation in your mouth, aka a place where your tongue touches the inside of your mouth or is positioned so that the air flows or is stopped in such a way as to make the sound. Making sounds is all about changing how air flows through our vocal tracts (throat, mouth, nose).
For example, in English ‘t’ and ‘d’ are both alveolar sounds made by touching the tip of your tongue to the hard palate behind your teeth. In Spanish those same sounds are dental, so you touch the tongue to the teeth to make the sound. In Russian you touch the hard palate and the teeth at once - the sounds are dental and alveolar.
In Russian consonants are sometimes palatalized. This means that there is a regular version — for ‘t’, touching the tip of the tongue to the teeth and hard palate. For regular “l”, touching the tip of the tongue to the hard palate or right behind your teeth and resting the body of the tongue along the bottom of the mouth, etc.
Then some consonants have a palatalized version, which happens before certain vowels. You lift the middle of your tongue and use it as the point of contact with the roof of your mouth instead of the tip. So for palatalized ‘t’, the middle of your tongue touches the ridge of the hard palate, and the tip of your tongue moves down to rest behind your bottom teeth. For ‘l’, the same.
In Russian the distinction is meaning bearing. So mat (regular t) and mat’ (palatalized t)’ are different words (cursing and mother, respectively). Another explanation here. Here’s an IPA chart with animation and videos of sounds being articulated. Try clicking on the ‘t’.
Connor is doing this. He doesn’t hit every single palatalized consonant but I’d say he’s hitting 85-90% of them. It’s wild! He was clearly taught by sound/phonetically which is great. But Americans often have trouble learning palatalization as a meaning bearing sound difference (I know this because I’ve taught Russian many times and there are studies) and he’s knocking it out of the park for someone who doesn’t speak the language.
You can hear it in his very careful pronunciation of I love you to Shane in ep6 - palatalized consonants in this phrase are the t, b, l, and b and l together: я тебя люблю/ ya tebya lyublyu.
Also every time he says the word хрень/ khren’ (shit/fuck) - he says this in episode 1 on the phone with Alexei twice and in the monologue to Shane in episode 5. The kh, r, and n are all palatalized, he nails it.
He even gets it in some tricky spots:
In episode 1 on the phone with Alexei with the baby crying in the background, he says the words для/ dlya (for) and блядь/ blyad’ (fuck). These are both notoriously tricky for English speakers learning Russian because every single consonant is palatalized. He gets both right.
He says the word больше/ bol’she (more) a lot during his monologue to Shane in episode 5 and nails the tricky palatalized ‘l’ in the middle every time.
3. Lack of aspiration
In English we have some aspirated consonants. The means that when we say them we sometimes produce a little puff of air with them: p, t, k. The aren’t aspirated 100% of the time but we don’t use aspiration for meaning like some languages do (ex. In Hindi kal (no aspiration) and khal (aspirated k) are two different words (time, skin)).
In Russian these sounds (p, t, k) are not aspirated. It’s difficult for English speakers to pick up this difference a lot of the time because it’s so subtle and hard to self monitor when you’ve never had to do it before.
You can feel it by putting your hand or a piece of paper in front of your mouth and saying “tik tok” or “cat”, you’ll probably notice the little air puffs.
In Russian similar words have no aspiration-так/ tak (‘so’) and кот/ kot (‘cat’)
Connor is doing this pretty well. He struggles with non-aspirated ‘t’, which is pretty normal. He’s better with p and k.
The times his “okay” sounds really Russian? Not aspirating the k is part of that.
He does a good job not aspirating the k sound in fuck in English, which adds to his accent.
In episode 1 he asks Alexei on the phone (when the baby is crying) как папа/ kak papa (how is dad), and overall does a good job with not aspirating any of those k’s or p’s.
His non-aspiration is pretty good overall in the long monologue with Shane in episode 5.
In my experience as someone who learned Russian as a second language and then has taught it to others, it feels a little bit like swallowing back or speaking from the back of your mouth to avoid aspirating. Or try putting another sound in front of the aspirated letter. (ex. In English, peak vs speak - the p in speak is not aspirated)
4. Correct vowel reduction, mostly
In Russian, word stress affects vowel sounds. In the syllable that is stressed (emphasized), the vowel has its most typical sound. In all of the unstressed syllables around it, the vowel sounds “reduce.”
Ex. the word for milk is молоко/ ‘moloko’ and the last syllable “ko” is stressed/where you will put the emphasis. The other two o’s don’t sound like o’s as a result. Correct pronunciation of this word is more like muh-lah-koh. As you get farther from the stressed syllable in either direction, the vowels get more reduced (o reduces to “ah” and then ə (“uh”) when fully reduced). (Tricky note: in this word the first syllable, muh, isn’t as reduced as it could be because it’s first, so it gets a little boost from that.)
Connor is doing this pretty beautifully throughout. Even when the consonant palatalization or the vowel quality is a little off, he’s knocking vowel reduction out of the park, for the most part. I imagine this is because he learned it phonetically.
Every time he says отец/ otets (father), he correctly pronounces the ‘o’ as ‘ah’.
There are many good examples in episode 1, but here’s a couple that stood out to me — when he’s watching Shane speak French, he says просто отлично/ prosto otlichno (just perfect/excellent) and correctly pronounces it “prostuh ahtlichnuh”.
He says the word теперь/ teper’ (now) a couple of times, and correctly pronounces the first e more like i (и).
When he and Sveta are talking about the ASG and votes in episode 4 on the bed, he says голосовали/ golosovali (they voted) and correctly reduces all 3 o’s, since the syllable ‘va’ has the stress: “guhluhsahvali”
5. Intonation of questions, sentences
Something you might know about English is that yes/no questions have rising intonation, aka we contour our pitch/voices up at the end. Like if I asked you “do you know the way to the store?” I would raise my intonation/pitch at the end to indicate it is a question. We also use falling intonation but often differently from Russian.
In many of the situations where we use rising intonation in English (including yes/no questions), Russian uses falling intonation. So the question goes down at the end instead of up.
There’s more to it than this but you can hear Connor do this very clearly when he asks Svetlana questions.
In episode 5, he asks her if Shane is also mediocre when they’re talking about other players on the bed before the ASG. And he uses falling intonation perfectly.
In episode 2 he says “this year?” When Sveta is telling him he could win the cup that year. His intonation falls perfectly again - а этом году? / v etom godu?
He also says a word in ep1 that I don’t think gets translated (the subtitles say “speaking Russian”) and his intonation is just so good - Неужели/ neuzheli (really). (His palatalization here is also great!) He says it to Shane when Shane asked him not to tell anyone in the first hotel room together.
Anyway. Connor, as we know, is hitting it out of the park with his Russian, and here are some of the reasons why. He picked up palatalization, mouth position, non-aspiration, intonation, and vowel reduction!! Like, damn.
I haven't been posting fic lately because I'm really wrapped up in a massive multi-volume pro project and also another very different kind of sekrit project (with her and her and her 👀). But that makes me a bit sad--I want to come to the potluck, even if I immediately conk out on the pile of coats in the back room.
So for Hanukkah this year, I've dug through my fic folders and turned up a bunch of stories that were close enough to done that I could polish them off, and I'll be posting one for each night. Bringing them into the light!
(I was going to start posting yesterday night but then I got sick and spent the weekend asleep on the couch instead. But it's still the first DAY of Hanukkah so it totally counts as on time? ;_;)
These are all quite short except the very last one. So I offer them just as little gifts, to hopefully bring a bit of light into your season and my own, no matter the dark outside. Happy Hanukkah to all who celebrate. <3
This first one's a short coda that comes right after 2014's Breaking News--if you haven't read that one, recently enough to remember what happens, you'll want to read it first as this will make very little sense without the backstory.
Press Gang (3786 words) by astolat
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Captain America (Chris Evans Movies)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Bucky/Tony/Pepper, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Tony Stark, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts, Peter Parker
Series: Part 3 of Maybe Home Is Somewhere I'm Going, Part 17 of Captain America works
Summary:
Bucky didn’t open his eyes: there was no imminent threat. The device on the other side of the bed was just chiming a wake-up call at Stark, who started complaining at Jarvis; shortly after that, Potts started complaining at Stark. “Oh my God,” she groaned. “Tony, I don’t believe you. How could you talk me into this? You know what happens when I drink too much champagne!”
nothing on this god's green earth can convince me that peter parker doesn't have an ao3 account where he is elbows deep in a 'rise of skywalker' fix-it fic. like, fully invested in it, been writing it pre-spider bite with ned, who is just as enthusiastic about it. but the thing is, it's really hard to do updates when you are literally spider-man.
every three months he'll post and in the author's note there's some shit like "sorry this took a while, i got shot seven times :/" or "i know it's been a minute, i literally got hit by a bus and then stabbed in the leg, but i'm all good!" or sometimes ned would log in and post with a note "hey i'm a friend posting on the author's behalf, they're healing from severe hypothermia but promised an update, so here it is!"
and the fic just gets increasingly more popular for the author notes alone. a good handful of the comments are something along the lines of "i'm not even in the star wars fandom, i'm just here to see if the author is good" or "every update i cheer for another day the author gets to live at this point"
and any reader who is a native new yorker kind of pieces together that holy shit the author might be spider-man because the timeline adds up, and they just fully embrace it. spider-man will stop a robbery and the guy behind the counter will ask when the next chapter will be up. spider-man returns a stolen backpack to a girl and she'll tell him that he "really got poe's voice down so well, it's really impressive."
ned thinks it is hilarious. mj finds out about the fic from twitter, to peter's absolute horror, and changes peter's contact name to "friendly neighborhood ao3 author". but the worst thing to happen is after an avengers battle where peter took a pretty big hit and ends up in med-bay. and during a press conference, when someone asks how spider-man is healing, tony just drops "spidey won't be down for too long. the star wars fic will be updated within the week, probably."
Y’all know when Mulan is sitting in the rain and watches her parents silhouette disappear as the candle is blown out and then her eyes squint in determination and the music that starts to play and you see her go into the family temple and light a match and bow in respect and then sneak into her parents room and switch the scroll for her hair brooch and then the way her reflection is shown as she pulls the sword and cuts her hair?? It’s literally more iconic than any marvel movie
Y’all know that there is heavy symbolism in that scene to show that Mulan is the spirit of the Great Stone Dragon and that’s why Mushu wasn’t able to awaken it?
Mulan sits in the rain underneath the statue of the Great Stone Dragon (who is looking down on her), and suddenly decides on a course of action. She looks up, resolved to go to war in place of her father and runs into the temple where she lights the match and beseeches protection for her family. The stone she bows to and that we see lit up by lightening strike is that of the dragon, whose eyes are looking out after her, lit from underneath by the candles. The scene transitions to the divider in the house that also has an icon of the dragon. where she replaces her hair comb with the summons. Then we see the sword hilt, also the dragon, and as she draws the blade we see her face replace it. She ties up her hair, then as she opens the wardrobe, the handles are also the dragon. After donning the armor, the view shows her facing us, with the hilt of the sword (the face of the dragon) in front of her face, where she then turns the sword to reveal her face, and sheaths it. As she leaves, we flash back to the temple, and the eyes of the dragon flash as her grandmother wakes up.
The Great Stone Dragon resides within her. She is the protector of the family.
After this explanation, the scene where Mushu cannot wake up the stone dragon makes so much more sense. I appreciate the symbolism so much more. I noticed the dragon but didn’t notice she was constantly juxtaposed with the dragon!
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